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Walkman

Michael Robbins

Issue 218, Fall 2016

I didn’t mean to quit drinking, it just sort of happened. I’d always assumed it’d be difficult, or notdifficult, exactly,but impossible.Then one New Year’s Evetwenty years agoat the VFW, Craig and Iwere drinking beerfrom brown bottles,peeling the labels offinto little confetti nests.In Mexico the previous New Year’s Eve, I’d started drinkingagain after a year sober. I traveled by myselfin Oaxaca for a monthand had at least twobeautiful experiences.The bus I was on broke down in the mountainsand I watched the stars blinkon with a Mexican girlwho later sent me a letterI never answered. That’s oneof the experiences. The othersare secrets. We left the VFWat a reasonable hour for once.I never took another drink.I’m not sure why not.I don’t think it had anythingto do with me. I thinkit was a miracle. Like when the hero at the lastsecond pulls the lever to switchthe train to the track the heroine’s not tied to. I was always broke in those days, whereas now I’m justpoor. I brought a Walkmanand a backpack stuffed withcassettes to Oaxaca. I was sickof them all within a weekand longed to buy a new tapebut couldn’t spare the pesos.I listened to Live Through Thisat the Zapotec ruinsof Monte Albán,Rumours on the bus to DF.At Puerto Ángel,my headphones leakingtinny discordacross a rooftop bar,I sat watching the ocean.An American man about the ageI am nowasked me what I was listening to.I said Sonic Youth. He askedwhich album, I said Sister.He chuckled and said “I’m Johnny Strike.”It probably wasn’t a miracle,but I couldn’t believe it.Here was the guy who wrote Crime’s 1976 classic“Hot Wire My Heart,”which Sonic Youth coveredon their 1987 classic, Sister,which I was listening toon my Walkmanat the end of Mexico in the sun.Except actually I waslistening to Daydream Nation,I change it to Sisterwhen I tell that story.But it’s a beautiful storyeven without embellishment.That’s another of the Oaxacanexperiences I mentioned,but the rest are secrets.Oh Mexico, as James Schuylerwrote to Frank O’Hara,are you just anotherdissembling dream?Schuyler was too tenderfor me then, but nowhe is just tender enough.I love his wishes.That “the beautiful humorouswhite whippet” couldbe immortal, for instance.But I can’t always forgivehis Central Park West tone,his Austrian operettasand long long lawns,though he wasn’t richand was tormentedenough, God knows.In the summer of 1984in Salida, Colorado,I had Slade and Steve Perryon my Walkman.I drank milk from jumboBurger King glassesemblazoned with scenesfrom Return of the Jedi.You can’t buy tamponswith food stampseven if your motherinsists that you try.Salida sits alongthe Arkansas River,whose current one hot afternoon swept me awayand deposited mein a shallow far downstream. It was the first time I thought I was going to die and didn’t. The Arkansasand everything else are mortal.My mom had been born again, to my chagrin. But lately I findI do believe in Godthe Father Almighty, Makerof heaven and earth:and in Jesus Christ,his Son our Lord,who was conceived bythe Holy Ghost. Howthe hell did I becomea Christian? Grace,I guess. It just sort ofhappened. I admit I findthe resurrection of the bodyand life everlastingdifficult, or not difficult,exactly, but impossible.There is no crazier beliefthan that we won’t becovered by leaves, leaves,leaves, as Schuyler has it,which is to say, really gone,as O’Hara put it in his lovelysad poem to John Ashbery.But hope is a different animalfrom belief. “The crazy hopethat Paul proclaims in 2Corinthians,” my friend Johnwrote to me when his motherdied. The Christian religionis very beautiful sometimesand very true at other times,though sophisticated personsare still expected to be aboveall that sort of thing. Well,I’m a Marxisttoo. Go and sell that thouhast, and give to the poor.On his new album Dr. Dre says “Anybody complainingabout their circumstanceslost me.” At the risk of losingmore billionaires, complainabout your circumstances,I say. I listened to The Chronicon my Walkman the summerI worked the night shiftat Kinko’s. I was dating Deirdre,who when I placed my headphoneson her ears and pushed playsaid “Why is this man cursingat me?” Said it more loudlythan was strictly necessary.A crazy manwould come into Kinko’saround two a.m. and ask meto fax dire, scribbled warningsto every news outlet in Denver.He wanted to let people knowthat God would punish the areawith natural disastersif the county succeededin evicting him from the landhe was squatting on. He’d ask meto help him think of variousextreme weather eventsthat God might unleash.I’d say “Typhoons?”though we were in Colorado.He’d scribble typhoons.Scraps of dirty paper absolutelycovered front and back with ominous,angrily scrawled black characters:attn. nbc nightly news there willbe fires tornadoes typhoons.I would help him compose his screedsthen fax each one to Denver’smajor TV and radio stations, the Denver Post,and the Rocky Mountain News,which has since stopped its pressesfor good. Except in fact I wouldonly pretend to fax themand then refuse his money,saying I was glad to help the cause.What if he wasn’t batshit but a trueprophet? The Denver metropolitan areawas not visited by disaster at that time, but this provesnothing. Look at Jonah andNineveh, that great city.I don’t believe he was a prophet,but Kinko’s is beautifulat two a.m. even if I hatedworking there. The rows of silent copierslike retired dreadnoughtsin a back bay, the fluorescentpallor, the classic-rock stationI would turn back up aftermy coworker turned it down.Did the guy sketch amateurishfloods, tornadoes, etc.,on his jeremiads or did Iimagine that? I wishI’d thought to make copiesfor myself. I wish I’d keptthe Mexican girl’s letter.I wish I’d kept the copierswith their slow armsof light, the lights of DFfilling the Valley of Mexicoas the bus makes its slow waydown and Stevie sings what youhad, oh, what you lost. Schuylerand his wishes! “I wish it was1938 or ’39 again.” “I wishI could take an engine apart and reassemble it.” “I wish I’dbrought my book of enlighteningliterary essays.” “I wish I could presssnowflakes in a book like flowers.”That last one’s my favorite. I wishI’d written it. I would often kickfor months until driven back to a bar by fear or boredom or both. I sawTomorrow Never Dies—starringPierce Brosnan, the second-worstJames Bond—in Oaxaca andcame out wishing my life wereromantic and exciting and charmedor at least that I had someoneto talk to. So I stopped at the firstbar I saw, and someonetalked to me. It’s so sad andperfect to be young and alone in the Zócalo when the little lightscome up like fish surfacingbeneath the moon and you wantto grab the people walking byand say who are you, are you as afraid as I am. And you don’tknow that twenty years lateryou’ll be writing this poem.Well, now I’m being sentimentaland forgetting that in those daysI wrote the worst poems ever.“I held a guitar and trembledand would not sing” is an actualline I wrote! The typhoon guycould have written better poetry.Today I want to write abouthow it’s been almost twenty yearssince I owned a Walkman.Just think: there was a songthat I didn’t knowwould be the last songI would ever play on a Walkman.I listened to it like it was justany old song, because it was.